


Conjuncture

by yikesola



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2013, Depression, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, liveshow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-25 08:54:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16658038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yikesola/pseuds/yikesola
Summary: During a 2013 liveshow Phil calls Dan, only to find that Dan's not in the apartment and has left his phone behind. He's worried; he's worried any time Dan does this.A fic about Phil's attempts to care for Dan before he sought professional help for his depression.





	Conjuncture

Phil doesn’t like to fight. He tries to avoid it any way he can. He’s good at dodging, most days. Sometimes he’s too tired.

It isn’t that Dan likes to fight. It’s that he doesn’t know what else to do.

He doesn’t know what could possibly shut up the buzzing in his brain, so he opts to shout loud enough to drown it out instead. And there’s no one to shout at but Phil. He’d shout at himself if he could, but that’s what all the buzzing is in the first place, so it wouldn’t do any good.

Not that shouting at Phil does any good. Doesn’t do any good at all. Does a fair amount of harm, actually.

Which is why even amidst his buzzing and shouting and frustrations and fears, he’s rather grateful that Phil’s so good at avoiding fights. At standing very still and speaking with a very even tone. At suggesting a walk, or a meal, or a fuck. Anything that will take enough time that Dan’s spiking emotions might manage to fizzle.

Unfortunately today, Phil’s just too tired.

He feels a headache prodding behind his eyes and threatening to grow, and he can feel in his empty gut that he’s hungry but nothing sounds remotely appetizing. He’s been awake for an hour; Dan’s been in the lounge for at least as long, but probably longer.

He’s not sure how much of how off he’s feeling is physical and how much is mental, but he also can’t be arsed to figure it out because Dan is standing in the doorway to his bedroom now and he doesn’t look a bit tired. He looks riled, full of energy and nowhere to direct it. Phil can feel the energy radiating off him from here. He can feel the fight that’s coming, for no other reason than Dan being unable to help it. Which makes Phil already all the more exhausted.

There’s a split second where Phil figures he ought to be grateful today is one of the days where Dan seems to be feeling too much. Too much anxiety, too much anger, too much of everything.

Because anything is better, really, than those days where Dan can’t seem to feel anything at all. Those days break Phil’s heart, because he simply doesn’t know what to do.

Then the split second passes and he’s just tired still. He flings his arm over his eyes and says, “Morning,” and hopes for… well, he’s not even sure what he hopes for. Hopes for the best.

“Well past morning, mate,” Dan says. “You getting up?”

“Not feeling well,” Phil says, trying to keep his tone from a whine, knowing it sounds like one anyway.

He hears Dan approaching the bed and gets a little too optimistic— he wonders if Dan’s frazzled emotions will be banished by pity if Phil feels unwell, wonders if it will manage to be a normal day after all, even if all the signs have been pointing against it since the moment he woke up.

“You know, I’d just love to be a supportive boyfriend and get you a coffee,” Dan starts, his hand reaching out for Phil’s and pulling it away from his face. Phil hears the edge in his voice and knows he should never have gotten his hopes up for a normal day. They’d been having a streak of them, too long of a streak of normal days with even some good days peppered in there. One of these days was bound to happen. “It shouldn’t even be hard since you’ve left enough cabinets open I won’t have to wonder where the damn coffee is.”

“Dan…” Phil feels like his nerves are all threadbare. Dan’s saying things that would normally be bickering, banter that hardly adds up to a real argument, but the set of his jaw and the caged look in his eyes tells Phil he doesn’t mean to be light today.

“Unfortunately I’m afraid of breaking my neck stumbling over all the fucking socks you’ve left on the stairs.”

“Dan,” Phil tries again.

“What?” Dan’s voice is sharp. He doesn’t sound like Dan at all, Phil thinks. Not his Dan, not on these days.

“Just… not today,” he says. “Please. Not today.”

Dan surprises him then, because the fight Phil had expected doesn’t happen at all. He just says, “Fine,” and closes the door to Phil’s bedroom on his way out.

Phil flings his arm back over his eyes. Though he doesn’t like to fight, he thinks it ought to strike him as odd that Dan dropped any attempts at one so easily. But he pushes that thought to the back of his mind, too tired to parse it out. He thinks twenty minutes later that he might have heard Dan leaving the apartment, but he can’t be sure because his headache never really went away.

*

Phil has to do a liveshow on YouNow. It’s been a few hours; he’s had some cereal and some ibuprofen and he doesn’t really feel much better so he’s thinking the off feeling is rooted in a bit more than the physical. He and Dan had planned to go to the cinema and go out for sushi— a date night, essentially. But those plans had been made a few days ago, before the shadow fell.

So now the only plan he can follow through with is his liveshow, something that he wouldn’t consider fun after a morning like he’s had, but something he figures he’ll get through without much trouble.

He begins it easy: apologizes for his hoarse voice, talks about his new shirt, talks about the very faint blue that is still in his hair but only in the sun. He shines the torch from his phone on his fringe to prove to the audience that his hair is still indeed blue. They don’t seem impressed, and he really can’t blame them.

“How’s life?” someone in the chat asks and Phil has no intention of telling the truth. He doesn’t like to outright lie to his viewers, but he figures this really doesn’t count.

“Life is good!” he says brightly. “I had another pumpkin spice latte earlier. I’m getting addicted to those. I’ve had three since they came out.” This was a lie, a small one. He’d had the PSL yesterday. Details, details.

He talks about his recent European trip and the 6 hours of footage he has to edit from it. He holds up a package of Sweedish sweets, Djungelvrål, which he’d been given while over there. Bringing things to show off in a liveshow helps, he learned ages ago. It gives him something to talk about, something to do with his hands other than adjust his fringe.

He opens the sweets and laughs, saying they’re shaped like tomagatchi poops. Then he eats one.

“What? That’s salty!” he tells the liveshow, shocked by the unexpected coating assaulting his tongue. “Ugh, guys, that is salt! You people are crazy. It’s nice now that I’m done with the salt. It’s licorice— I thought that was sugar.” It’s sticking to his teeth. “It’s like a prank,” he says, “Mega Gross!”

As bad as the sweet was, it ate up three minutes. All in all, that’s worth it.

He has transitioned into talking about _Attack on Titan_ and how he’s learning to read manga, “You have to read it backwards, which is really confusing,” when someone in the chat says, “Give the sweets to Dan.”

He does this a lot in liveshows, reads something and immediately realise he should’ve slowed down. He knows even if Dan were in the apartment, he wouldn’t appear on Phil’s liveshow on days like today. “I will do, if he is here,” he says. “He’s not here at the moment.”

He talks about how he had meant to go to sushi tonight, doesn’t mention that he’d meant to go with Dan, then takes a moment to spon the giveaway and read off the names of fans. These rapid readings of usernames are him giving his anxious brain a break. The liveshow is exhausting him more than he’d expected, with the headache and the day in general, and he’s less than ten minutes in.

“So I wanted to go the cinema as well today but I don’t really have time,” he says. Another lie, a little one. An acceptable one. Maybe he lies more than he likes to think. “I wanted to go see _Rush_ , ‘cause everyone says _Rush_ is meant to be amazing. And I wanted to go see _Gravity_ which I thought was out, but it’s not out.”

He talks about the CBBC show he and Dan did yesterday. About the Voldemort-white shade of makeup they’d given him, and about how Dan got Essex-orange makeup which thankfully didn’t look so orange on camera.

It had felt like a safe topic, but he realizes he should have known better than to bring up Dan again when someone in the chat says, “Will you ring danisnotonfire and see if he’s here?”

“I’ll find out if he’s here,” he says, picking up his phone. Maybe he’s glad the liveshow is giving him the excuse to call Dan when he’d been too afraid to do it himself earlier. “I don’t think he is. He went out earlier.”

He hears Dan’s ringtone from over on the table. “Oh!” he says, when he realizes what he’s hearing. He feels every muscle in his body tense when he does, feels how wide his eyes have gotten, but he forces a laugh for the liveshow. “This isn’t gonna work. Because…” he stands to grab Dan’s phone, “Phil Lester is calling. He set the derpiest face for me ever as well, look at that. Thanks, Dan.”

Later he’ll worry about his moment of realization being giffed and screenshotted and passed around the internet for weeks, maybe longer. Later he’ll kick himself for slipping up when live, when he can’t edit it out.

Right now though the thought doesn’t cross his mind. Right now his hands are shaking worse than usual and his stomach is sinking so heavily it might as well be lined with lead.

Right now he’s terrified.

Dan’s done this before and it’s always left him terrified. Dan leaving the apartment with no warning is enough to scare Phil on its own, not knowing quite when he left or when he means to be back or where he even goes. But when Dan doesn’t even have his phone on him, Phil’s worry skyrockets.

In that moment, he does everything he can not to let it show. He knows he just has to run down the clock until an hour, or close enough to an hour, is eaten up and he can end the liveshow and have the freedom to react authentically— to shout or cry or pace the floor until Dan comes back.

He isn’t really sure just what his reaction will be, but he knows he can’t have it now, not here on the liveshow.

He can’t.

So he doesn’t.

Instead, he leaves a quirky voicemail, something that tempers his immediate need to shout for Dan but also keeps his audience of 4,000 unaware of his worry. “Daaaaaaan!” he yells into the phone. “You left your phone! The house is full of walruses! I’m dying— one just ate my leg! Arhghfhhaaaa…”

He hangs up.

“There we go,” he says to the liveshow. “Hopefully he will get that.”

He hears, or thinks he hears, a noise somewhere in the apartment. “Are you here?” he asks, turning from the liveshow and towards the door with more hope than he should have allowed himself to have. He asks the empty apartment one last time, “danisnotonfire? There is no danisnotonfire here.”

He can feel the physical effort it takes to pull the muscles in his face into a liveshow-appropriate neutrality. “Ummm yeah, so I wanted to get him to try that sweet but I’ll do it when he returns.”

Phil allows himself a few seconds that feel like much, much longer. Then he reads from the chat, “Are you planning to visit Mexico?”

He is grateful for the distraction, grateful that the chat is generating topics on its own. He talks about filming _Forever Train_ with PJ because someone in the chat asked, and soon after he’s begging for a Q&A mostly because he cannot think of topics himself what with the alarm bells currently going off in his head. “Go go go,” he tells the audience, “ask me some things!”

They let him talk about nonsense things, things that don’t terrify him. Fall Out Boy and braces and how his blanket answer to the question, “Will you come to this town,” is, “Probably one day!”

He reads a question about pizza and it has him talking about Domino’s BBQ chicken pizza, with chicken wings and garlic bread and coke, “and maybe a Sizzler as well,” because that is the sort of feast of trash pizza that he and Dan dig into after the bad days clear off. He’s hoping they’ll order that soon, very soon. He’s hoping— he’s hoping too much, hoping for things he can’t be thinking about with 4,000 people watching him live.

“All I tweet about is food,” he says. Then he digs through his twitter. Someone mentions needing to sleep. “It’s kind of a dozey liveshow,” he admits, “I’m not 100% today.” Then, because he can practically hear them typing away already, he adds a generic reason why: “I’m having throat issues.”

Back to the Q&A, he urges. He doesn’t want to have to think. His thoughts are flying too quickly and they’re all awful, they’re all Dan and distress and he needs the audience to ask him nonsense.

He tells them his favourite colour (blue), his pet hate (loud chewing), his worst phobia (drowning).

He answers questions about the next PINOF, resisting the acerbic urge to say, “Because the last one wasn’t a disaster or anything.” Which isn’t fair. Their fourth PINOF wasn’t a disaster. It just makes his stomach drop to think of it compared to the PINOF he and Dan filmed the day after they first met.

Maybe this fifth one will be better.

He has no intention of sharing this with the liveshow, of course.

So instead he responds to questions about Orlando, about his new shirt, about Pokemon and spam emails and Halloween costumes.

Only 28 minutes into the show and someone asks “Is Dan back?” Phil kicks himself for reading it. He really shouldn’t have read it.

“I don’t think so,” he says. “I haven’t heard the door go.”

He talks about _Kingdom Hearts_ and _Adventure Time_ and the weather. He talks about why he started making YouTube videos and briefly about his second channel. He says hello to the fans again, listing usernames and somewhere in the back of his mind he’s able to be grateful that no one seems to be picking up on the panic running through his veins.

35 minutes in he starts the drawing game. It eats up 13 minutes and he’s grateful for something that matters even less than a Q&A in the long run. They finish with a monster named Little Miss Stake; she has a moon head and leaf hair and a mermaid body. She farts rainbows, has a lip and nose ring, and Phil can’t be bothered to care about the quality or anything else because he’s almost done it. He’s almost in the clear.

“Gonna go soon,” he says. “In about five minutes.” He packs those five minutes talking about how he can’t dance and some horror movies he likes. He mentions _Scream_ then remembers _Scream 2_ has Buffy in it. “But she’s not Buffy,” he tells the liveshow, because obviously he’s talking about Sarah Michelle Gellar. Not actually about Buffy. He remembers that she was in _The Grudge_ and recommends that as well.

He does a final spon for his giveaway, reads out a handful of usernames, and signs off telling them he’s “really hungry and I need a wee,” because it sounded far more relatable and appropriate than how he actually feels in this moment. 

He finally ends the liveshow and tosses his laptop on the other end of the couch. He picks up Dan’s phone and holds it in a shaking hand. He wants to cry. He feels like he will cry. He takes in a shaky breath that doesn’t feel like enough so he takes in another and another until he’s nearly hyperventilating.

*

Phil thinks it’s been long enough since he had some ibuprofen that he can take some more. Or he decides he doesn’t really care if it’s been long enough or not: his head is throbbing and his stomach is churning and he just wants Dan home. He wants Dan home. He wants to see him, he wants to know that he’s warm and dry because looking out the window the October night looks to be anything but.

After chugging a glass of water with the tablets, Phil tries to catalogue what he knows for sure. He knows Dan is not in the apartment. That’s easy. He knows he left his phone behind. That’s also easy. He knows it’s been hours, but he can’t pinpoint just how many. Four, five? Longer, less?

He doesn’t know for sure what to expect when Dan comes back.

He also really doesn’t care because right now all that he can do is sit on the sofa in silence waiting to hear the door open— it doesn’t matter what Dan will do or say or look like when he gets back, so long as he does.

He’s seen Dan break down before; Dan’s seen him break down as well but Dan’s somehow were always more volatile. After an explosive fight with his father, the moment he committed to dropping out of uni, during the shitstorm that involved a certain video leaking for all the internet to see.

These days are different.

All the breakdowns before seemed more than justified. These breakdowns are something deep within Dan trying to rip him apart from the inside. Phil can see it, he can feel it radiating off Dan’s skin, and it terrifies him.

Maybe he should be angrier over the way Dan treats him on bad days— only ever on bad days— maybe he should demand more out of a nearly four-year relationship. But he couldn’t possibly. Not with the way Dan clearly hurts himself more than he ever hurts Phil, on bad days and on the days that immediately follow as the guilt threatens to coat his entire body.

So if Dan walks in with angry set brows and a tone that cuts right through Phil, if he returns in a blustering cloud of snaps and shouts, Phil knows his first and loudest emotion will be relief. Relief that he’s returned at all.

It seems to take ages, but eventually Phil hears the scrape of a key in the door, hears it open and close and the shuffle of feet on the stairs.

Phil stands, tense and rigid and every muscle in his body pulled tight. He’s still gripping Dan’s phone when he walks into the lounge and shrugs out of his jacket. His hair is damp, the shadows under his eyes are pronounced.

He wants to reach out to Dan, to hold him, shake him. But he’s rooted to the spot. He can’t seem to get his legs to work.

“You left your phone,” Phil says, because in all the time waiting he never thought of what he wanted to say.

Dan is standing heavily, shoulders slumped and hips low, like the fight that had been coursing through his veins earlier in the day had burned up so thoroughly that he doesn’t have any fight left at all, not even enough to fight gravity.

If earlier Dan was having one of those days where he was feeling too much, it looks like during his time away from the apartment he slipped into one of those days where he doesn’t feel anything at all. It’s just one of those days where he can’t even see Phil, just looks right through him.

Phil tries not to let that sting. He figures that’s better than Dan actively trying to hurt him, right?

Still, secondhand smoke can give you lung cancer, and Dan walking past him without once having looked him in the eye hurts whether he means it to or not.

“You can ignore the voicemail if you want,” he says, holding the phone out towards him. “It’s from my liveshow. It’s stupid.”

Dan walks towards their bedrooms without collecting his phone. He turns right and shuts the door to his room but it doesn’t have enough force to actually click closed, just sits perched as a feeble barrier. Then it thuds shut, as though Dan leaned against it with all his weight.

Phil sits shakily back down on the sofa. His head is in his hands. He allows the sheer relief of Dan being home to wash over him, to override everything else and convince himself to go to his room and try to sleep off the last dregs of his headache and his worry.

He tries to hope for a normal day tomorrow, and as he fitfully drifts asleep alone in his bed he almost manages it.

The next morning Phil is knocking on his door, but Dan doesn’t answer. Phil turns the handle slowly, creaks the door open slowly, steps in slowly. Dan is lying on his bed with his duvet wrapped around him so thoroughly that Phil can’t see anything but a tuft of curly hair poking through.

He places a glass of water on Dan’s bedside table.

He figures Dan is sleeping based on the steadiness of his breathing; on bad days Dan’s breathing is never steady unless he’s sleeping. It’s ragged and short and uneven. So the steady rise and fall of the duvet is a comfort, and Phil hopes Dan will see the water when he wakes up.

He’s grateful, more grateful than he can say, that Dan’s sleeping at all. Most bad days he lies with haunting eyes framed by purple bruises because he can’t fall asleep. Which means he has to soak in each minute of bleakness, instead of the alternative which is sleeping while it runs through him and waking up somewhat recovered.

Sometimes Phil compares it to the flu, how sleeping like the dead for a few days can make all the difference in the world.

Maybe it’s not really the same, he thinks, but he’s grateful Dan’s sleeping nonetheless.

When he goes to check on Dan again, he sees that the glass of water has been half emptied. Maybe it shouldn’t make him so happy he could cry to see that Dan drank half a glass of water before promptly falling back asleep, but it does. He takes the water and refills it before placing it back on the bedside table. Then he takes a few quiet moments just to look at Dan because the duvet is no longer covering his face.

God, he’s so beautiful.

God, he’s so tired and sad and cross; even when he’s curled up in his bed asleep those things aren’t fully wiped away from his face.

God, Phil loves him. He loves him so damn much, and he wishes he could do more. Wishes he could do anything. Wishes Dan didn’t look so tired and sad and cross.

A few hours have passed again before Phil goes to check on Dan a third time.

The glass of water is empty, but Phil wants to cry for a different reason this time because it isn’t empty from Dan gulping it down. It’s tipped over on its side and sitting in a pool of spilt water, a trail going down the side of the nightstand before soaking into a very damp spot on the carpet. Phil isn’t sure if Dan knocked it over accidentally or in a fit of annoyance, and he’s not sure which would be better or worse but he refills the glass once more anyway. He throws a towel on the damp spot but doesn’t bother to do much more to dry it.

That’s how an entire day passes since Phil saw Dan walk back into the apartment, looking frozen and hollow and right through him: Phil bouncing back and forth between wanting to give Dan space and wanting to offer support.

He also spends the day Googling things he’s already Googled hundreds of times. Googling Dan’s behaviour and trying to find out what it means and coming to the same conclusion he always does, the same conclusion that the doctors tell Dan when he goes in looking desperately for explanation— that he probably has depression. That he probably needs to see a therapist.

He reads listicles about “11 Secret Signs You’re Depressed” and “8 Things People With Hidden Depression Do” and watches YouTube videos boiling “5 Types of Depressive Disorders” down into 11 minutes of info that is helpful, but not at all new. Phil knows most of this already.

And Phil knows Dan knows it too, because Dan spends the mornings after days like today Googling as well. Dan digs through the internet and tries to find something that’ll tell him something different. Something that won’t end with him sitting in a shrink’s office with some stranger telling him it’s his father’s fault that he’s a furry, or telling him what he’s actually afraid of: that this is something he can’t fix on his own.

Eventually, Phil’s eyes burn from the screen and from the day and from the tears he is stubbornly refusing to shed. He sees that it is 1am, which isn’t as late as they stay up on average, but everything is wearing on him and he just wants to sleep.

The thought of crawling into a bed alone, no Dan to curl up with for the second night in a row, is far from pleasant. But what hasn’t been the last two days?

He checks on Dan a final time, sees that he’s still deeply sleeping, sees that the glass of water is untouched and that the duvet has been pushed to the bottom of the bed. Dan’s hair is curling wildly, as he hasn’t bothered to straighten it since the shadow descended and he’s been walking in the rain and sweating and running his hands through it since. It’s more frizz than anything at this point.

Phil leans down then, his worry over not wanting to wake Dan being briefly overridden by how wide the gulf between them seems in this moment. He kisses the frizzy, curly mess that falls on Dan’s forehead and pulls the duvet up because he notices the goosebumps covering Dan’s shoulders.

He watches Dan for another moment, the light from the hallway falling on his face like in a painting. Then he walks the short distance to his own bedroom.

*

Phil isn’t sure what time it is when he wakes up, but despite the fact that the sky outside his window is still dark he feels as though he’d been sleeping for a while. His limbs still feel heavy, and there’s half a moment where he isn’t sure what woke him until he feels arms wrapping around his waist and knees folding in behind his.

“Dan?” he croaks; it sounds impossibly loud hanging in the night air. Dan pulls himself closer, tightening his arms around Phil’s waist.

“I’m—” Dan’s voice is so fragile, “I’m sorry, Phil.”

Phil turns to get a look at him; the light of the city falls through his window because he never bothered with the curtains after deciding to go to bed, and the moving lights from the cars below glisten back in tear tracks across Dan’s cheeks. Phil wipes them with a shaking thumb.

“Hey now,” Phil says, a little less croaky, as gently as he can manage. He can see, or thinks he can see in the dim light, that Dan’s eyes are unclouded finally. That he neither looks like a caged animal nor a ghost of himself. He just looks like Dan, a very upset and very tired Dan sure, but his Dan.

“I’m sorry,” Dan says again with a new wave of tears making new tracks, some falling down onto Phil’s arm below, others catching on Dan’s shirt.

“None of that, babe, none of that,” Phil says as he pulls Dan into his chest, holding him so closely he’d be worried of breaking him if Dan wasn’t gripping just as tight.

Dan’s proper sobbing now. He’s feeling everything, but not too much. He’s feeling what he’s meant to feel. Phil’s heart aches for him, his heart aches and his palms ache and the spaces between his ribs ache for this man who is his everything. And he knows the cry will do him good, so he lets Dan cry while he holds him tight.

“But I am,” Dan says after a while, his voice caught on a choke but he keeps going. “I am sorry. I treated you like shit all day, I treat you like shit all the fucking time.”

Phil is quiet. He doesn’t know what to say that won’t make Dan feel worse.

“You should hate me,” Dan whispers. Phil grips tighter. “Why don’t you hate me?”

“Hush,” Phil croaks, this time not from sleep but from his own set of tears which have decided to make an appearance. “I don’t hate you, Dan.”

“You should.”

“I love you.”

“But—”

“Dan,” Phil says, pulling Dan’s face from his chest and tilting him to meet his eye. “I love you.” There is a desperate hint to his tone. He needs Dan to hear him. He needs Dan to believe him, believe that whatever else is true he loves him.

They can trade affectionate insults and say they hate each other with crinkled smiles on normal days. It’s how they keep from melting in their own sappiness. But when it isn’t a normal day, when Dan’s demons are telling him to believe only the worst even when said sweetly, Phil makes sure he is clear.

He says again, “I love you.” He kisses him. “I love you, Dan. I love you,” and on normal days the sweetness would give him a cavity. But today he needs Dan to hear it. It won’t fix everything. It won’t fix anything. But he still needs Dan to feel it so thoroughly that he can hear Phil’s voice echoing in his brain later even amongst the buzzing that tells him otherwise.

“My point is you shouldn’t,” Dan says, frowning and creasing his brow in a way Phil wants to smooth out. “All I do is hurt you, and ruin _everything_ and—”

“Shut up,” Phil pulls him close to his chest again. He tries switching tactics; tries for a little levity because the air is so heavy he thinks they’ll be crushed. “Don’t talk shit about my boyfriend.”

Dan chokes out some combination of a laugh and a sob.

“You should eat,” Phil says, not caring what ridiculous time of night it is considering Dan hasn’t eaten in days. “Could you eat, if I got you something?”

Dan takes a moment to answer, but when he says, “Maybe,” Phil’s sigh of relief is so damn shaky.

*

They’re sat at the dining table with chairs pulled so closely together that Dan’s legs are draped over Phil’s. He’s only wearing pants and Phil’s old York hoodie, and Phil can feel how cold Dan’s legs are even through the fabric of his Superman pyjamas.

It worries him, that Dan’s legs feel cold. Dan’s usually so warm. But he had shook his head when Phil offered to grab a blanket, and Phil reminds himself that this is just one of the things Dan does after the worst of a bad day has passed: he tries to remind himself how he can feel again. So he’s a little cold, and he’s drinking his coffee straight off the kettle the way he usually teases Phil for, because the chills from his bare skin and the burning in his mouth are visceral and grounding.

Dan is picking at the two slices of toast Phil gave him. He’s made admirable headway into one of them; there’s probably a third of it left. He’s just picking at the crust now. There’s also a cereal bowl of red grapes that have gone largely untouched but Phil thought it was worth a try. Dan did eat about four of them.

He’s grateful Dan can make the effort at all. Phil knows when his body and his brain can agree on just how hungry he is, he’s going to order a truly shameful amount of takeaway for Dan and that he will demolish it.

So, for now, this attempt is enough. He’s happy Dan is trying. He’s happy Dan can try.

“I _hate_ it when you just leave like that,” Phil says, knowing it has to be said.

“I know.”

“It scares the hell out of me, Dan.”

“I know.”

Phil sighs. “At least take your phone next time. Please.” He grips Dan’s leg, hoping its grounding for both of them. It’s certainly grounding for him. “I get it if you need space, or air. Whatever. But at least have your phone on you.”

Dan nods, once. “I mean, I don’t really think when I do it,” he says. “But I will, if I think of it.”

“Okay,” Phil says. “Okay. Thank you.” He lets out a breath and looks away from Dan when he says the hardest part. “You know, I really think you ought to go see someone.” He’s said it before. He feels like there are days when he says it on a loop.

“I can handle it, Phil.” Dan’s said this before too. Phil thinks he might have believed it the first few times.

They’re quiet while the rain falls outside and the sun starts to rise somewhere behind the clouds. Dan finishes the toast and a surprising number of grapes. He finishes the coffee and a large glass of water. Phil starts to feel his muscles relax just slightly.

“Do you wanna laugh?” Phil asks when he glances towards the lounge, not sure if it’s a good idea but unable to shake it now it’s in his brain.

Dan shrugs and says, “Make me laugh, Lester.”

Phil walks to the coffee table and picks up the discarded pack of Djungelvrål which had been sitting there since his liveshow. He holds it out to Dan and says, “Have one.”

Dan grabs one from the bag and says, “I mean, I obviously shouldn’t trust you.” Then he eats it.

After the second it takes the saltiness to register on his tongue, Dan’s face cracks into the first smile Phil’s seen on him in days. “Jesus fucking Christ!” he says, spitting the sweet out onto the plate along with the breadcrumbs. “What the fuck, Phil!” His eyes are crinkling and he’s reaching for Phil’s coffee to wash out the taste. “What is that?” he asks through a laugh, a good hearty laugh, a better laugh than Phil could have expected him to give. 

“Sweedish sweet,” he says through is own laugh.

“I’m not going to dignify that by calling it a prank.” His smile is so wide and his dimples so deep that Phil can’t help but lean forward and give him a kiss that is interrupted by their giggles and teeth.

“Had all the necessary components,” Phil reasons while he sits. “And you laughed.”

“You’re always making me laugh,” Dan says. His legs are back in Phil’s lap now. Phil doesn’t say what he’s thinking, that he can’t make Dan laugh on certain days. It goes without saying. But the fact that he made him laugh here and now, it’s a sign that has Phil feeling rather confident he’ll be placing a Domino’s order for dinner later.

*

Phil manages to talk Dan into having a shower before the day has well and truly begun. “You’re freezing. And grimy. Gotta wash it all off,” he says.

Dan’s convinced in the end by Phil promising two things, one that he’ll take it with him, and two that they’ll crawl back into bed as soon as they’re done.

They’re both bone-tired. They both have no interest in letting the other one out of their sight. This day still feels a little off. Not in the way the last few have; today still seems to have the potential to be a normal day. But they’ll be sluggish and clingy. Dan will be sad and Phil will be worried. And together they’ll wait it out, hoping that the next day will be a normal day. Hell, maybe even a good day— they’ve earned it.

Phil runs the shower so hot that the room soon fills with steam, the air thick. He wants the hot water to soak into Dan’s skin and warm him to his core.

He washes Dan’s hair and whispers how much he loves when Dan leaves it curly. He whispers it so lightly Dan laughs that he can hardly hear him over the water. When Phil says it louder, “I love your hair left curly,” Dan laughs again.

“Less effort, I’ll say that much.” He rinses the shampoo out of his hair and pulls Phil closer so they’re both standing under the spray. “What else you love about me?”

“Everything,” Phil smiles. He kisses Dan softly, slowly. “I love your mouth,” he says after biting at Dan’s bottom lip. “Your smile. Your dimples.”

“My cheek defects,” Dan corrects.

“Yes, those,” Phil says. “I love them.” He lathers a washcloth and runs it across Dan’s chest. It’s rinsed away almost immediately by the spray since they aren’t willing to move. “I love your neck,” he says, kissing it. “I love your giant hands,” he says when Dan lifts one of them to Phil’s hair. 

Phil doesn’t say _I love that you came home and that you ate and that you’re letting me clean you up_ but he does think it as he shuffles Dan towards the tiled wall. Dan hisses when his shoulders touch the cold tile, and Phil grips his hips.

Now that the worst of Dan’s episode is over, now that he can feel again, Phil wants Dan to feel this. To feel him. To feel bliss rush through him and be told he deserves it.

One hand moves down to wrap around Dan’s half-hard length and Phil says, “I love you.” He doesn’t get cheeky or dirty as he normally would. Dan’s still feeling low and Phil, as before, makes sure he is clear.

He wanks Dan off, mouthing along his neck and collarbones, until his come spills over his hand. Phil moves them back under the water then, holding Dan up as his legs shake.

“I love you,” he says again, and again. He says it even if Dan can’t believe it on bad days. He says it even as he knows it won’t heal him. He says it because he needs Dan to know.

Dan reaches between them and finishes Phil quickly. They’re too weary for any fancy tricks. They’re too drunk on each other to crave anything else.

They finally leave the shower once the steam is so thick they feel the heaviness in their lungs. They crawl into Dan’s bed because Phil says he’s sick of his wicker bed with the broken slats, and so they can turn on Dan’s amber lamp and fairy lights but shut the curtains to keep the morning at bay.

The yellow glow falls on Dan’s crinkled eyes and Phil feels better than he has in days. Better than he has in ages.

“I’m sorry I worried you,” Dan says quietly. “I don’t mean to worry you.”

“I know.” Phil brushes a damp curl off Dan’s forehead. “I know. But you just,” he sighs, “It seems like these days are hitting you harder than they used to.”

Dan shrugs. “I don’t know about that.”

“I just wish you’d let someone help you.”

“I let you help me.”

 _Hardly_ , Phil thinks. _At the tailend_. “Someone professional. Someone that knows what they’re doing.”

The argument is cyclical. They’ve had it in the hazy stilted hours after Dan’s worst days and the moves are so well-practised Phil would call it a dance if he had any confidence in his dancing abilities. Actually, he figures it’s not far off, because he’s as successful in these arguments as he’d be at dancing.

Dan surprises him, though, and Phil’s a little more successful than he could have expected to be. “I’ll consider it, Phil,” he says, flatly and already half-asleep.

“Okay,” Phil breathes, pulling Dan close to his chest. He wants to push Dan into agreeing to something more immediate, something more concrete. But this is already more than Dan has ever agreed to before; if he’s considering it, it’s not a no. And if it’s not a no, it might be a someday. Phil just needs to know when to push, and right now he figures he’s pushed enough. “Okay,” he says again.

He drops a kiss on the top Dan’s head and feels the drying curls tickle his nose.

It’ll take time. It’ll take work. It’ll take patience.

Dan will be sad and Phil will be worried— they’ll have bad days and normal days and good days, and somehow they’ll work to flip the current ratio so that maybe the good days will outnumber all the others. Phil listens to Dan’s steady breathing and feels the warmth of Dan’s chest against his. It’s a comfort. Dan will be okay. They’ll be okay.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading-- come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/180287814164/conjuncture-rating-m-word-count-69k-summary/) !


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